One person: Starting with the Snow Drinking Blade

Qu Tong looked up at him. The moonlight illuminated half of her face, while the other half remained in shadow. The faint curve of her lips was still there, but something in her eyes shifted slightly in that instant.

"You guessed right, but not entirely," she said. "I didn't leave anything on the core of the seal. But the structure of that seal itself has been built up for too many years; reinforcement is only a temporary fix. It's like a garment that's been patched too many times. The new fabric is strong, but the seam between the old and new fabric will still crack first. This time you patched the main vein of the core, but three secondary veins on the edge have already developed micro-cracks. In a while—six months or a year—the cracks will widen back onto the main vein. At that time, the seal will loosen again."

"Six months to a year." Nie Lingfeng extracted the most useful figures from the statement, like picking a valuable ore from a pile of rubble. "That's enough."

"Enough for you to use once, twice, three times." Qu Tong took off her left glove, folded both gloves neatly, and put them into the inside pocket of her trench coat. "But the seal isn't something that can be replenished indefinitely. Each time it's reinforced, the original structure will be washed away by new Qi flow, and the surface tension and the remaining internal structure will become increasingly disproportionate. By the fourth or fifth reinforcement—the core of the array will collapse. Not crack, but collapse. The entire seal will shatter from the inside."

"Then let's use these years to find other solutions."

Qu Tong stared at him for a while. The stare didn't last long, maybe three or four breaths, but Nie Lingfeng could sense something unfamiliar mixed in with it—like someone who had been playing chess alone suddenly noticing that someone across from them had sat down and picked up a chess piece.

"I hope you'll still think that way then," she said.

She turned and took a few steps to the east, then suddenly stopped, turned her head, and looked over her shoulder at the Zhenwu sword wrapped in blue cloth on Wang Ye's back. Her gaze lingered for a moment on the folds of the cloth, then she looked away, and continued walking forward, stepping into the shadows that were illuminated and dimmed by the overlapping moonlight and blue light.

Within a minute of her entering the darkness, the scattered members of the Yaoxing Society in the eastern valley began to move in unison, like an ant colony whose nest had been disturbed, retreating in twos and threes towards the other side of the mountain. Their footsteps were light, making almost no extra sound, only a few scattered stones rolling down the icy slope, making short, broken sounds in the night wind.

Zhang Chulan remained crouched behind the icy rock, maintaining a half-squatting position the entire time; his thighs were already a little numb. He only dared to stand up after Qu Tong's figure had completely disappeared from sight. He didn't dare to move too much, first slowly straightening his left leg and then switching to his right. The soreness in his groin made him grit his teeth. As he lifted his foot towards the ice wall, his leg was still weak, and he slipped. Feng Baobao, who was beside him, reached out and caught him at the elbow, preventing him from falling.

"Thank you, Sister Bao'er." He regained his focus and strode towards the seal.

Nie Lingfeng had already fully sheathed the Snow Drinking Blade. He squatted down beside Wang Ye, not urging him to get up, but simply waiting quietly. Wang Ye's breathing was slowly getting longer, gradually returning from that short, almost exhausting state. His lips were still pale, but his eyes occasionally moved, indicating that he was fully conscious.

"Sit a little longer," Nie Lingfeng said.

Wang hummed in response, without opening his eyes.

The others gradually gathered around. Wang Zhenqiu returned from the west side after removing the last cordon line. His three-section staff had been folded into a short stick and tucked into his waistband. The first thing he did upon arriving was to take out the thermos of hot water from his backpack and hand it to Wang Ye. Wang Ye felt the warmth emanating from the thermos, opened his eyes, took it, and held it in both hands, feeling the warmth slowly travel from his palms to his fingertips.

Zhang Lingyu landed on the outermost edge of the group. His Taoist robe was covered in snow and mud, and a tear in one of his cuffs revealed the lining underneath, but fortunately, his skin was unharmed. He stopped two steps away from the seal, not getting too close, and quietly watched the layer of blue light membrane flowing at a steady pace for a while. Then he turned his gaze back to the direction where Qu Tong had disappeared. The line between his brows twitched, but he didn't speak.

Lu Linglong and Lu Lin were among the last to return from the east side. When Lu Linglong ran over, the faint bloodstain on her cheek was clearly visible in the moonlight. It was less than two fingers wide, stretching from below her cheekbone to in front of her earlobe, likely grazed by some kind of sharp force. She raised her hand and pressed the spot, a bit of dried blood clot on her fingertip, which she casually wiped off on her trouser leg before heading straight for Nie Lingfeng.

"Master!" She raised her voice slightly, her excitement evident. "Those three tents on the east side are in complete chaos! Seven people have escaped, and we've apprehended three more. What should we do next?"

"Give it to the company people; they're waiting at the foot of the mountain to meet you." Nie Lingfeng took a band-aid out of his pocket and handed it to her. "Put this on your face first."

As Lu Linglong took the package, tore open the packaging, and applied it to her cheekbone, she realized the cut was still there. After applying it, she pressed the edge with her fingertip, then looked up and grinned. Her smile shone brightly in the moonlight, showing no trace of the frustration caused by the cut.

It was late at night when the campfire was lit in the sheltered spot on the ice wall. The fire source was a shard chopped from a dried-out tree root. Wang Zhenqiu pulled a small bottle of accelerant from a compartment in his backpack, poured two drops onto the fire, and the flames leaped up half a foot high, illuminating an area of ​​about ten feet around them. The group sat in an irregular circle around the fire, with the waterproof tarpaulin of the tent behind them and the flickering orange light in front of them.

Zhang Chulan stretched out his legs, leaning against his backpack, legs crossed, boot tips pointing towards the fire to warm them. He exhaled a puff of white breath, his hands clasped in front of his knees: "I really didn't expect this trip to go so smoothly. When I left this morning, I thought I was going to wrestle with Qu Tong in the snow for an hour."

"You think it's going smoothly?" Wang Zhenqiu pulled a red-hot piece of coal from beside the fire, using a branch to cool it down. "You were chased halfway up the mountain by that guy with the double hooks, and I shielded you, almost getting hooked in the waist. Is that what you call going smoothly?"

"That's called strategic maneuvering! Didn't you see? He slipped when I led him to that ice ridge on the east side. If you had followed up and helped him out, he would be tied up and drinking tea in the tent right now."

"I'm busy stopping those two guys who're trying to flank you and cut off your escape route; I don't have time for a double hook with you."

"Why didn't you say so earlier?"

"You didn't ask either."

"Alright, alright, it's my fault for not asking."

Lu Linglong sat to one side of the fire, sipping a cup of hot cocoa. Her face, flushed from being exposed to the cold wind all day, was rosy in the firelight. The edge of the bandage on her cheekbone was slightly peeling up; she smoothed it down with her finger and continued drinking. Lu Lin was adding firewood to the fire beside her, carefully adjusting each piece to ensure the dry end was aligned with the flames.

"Master Wang," Zhang Chulan turned his head, resting his chin on his knees, and looked at Wang Ye, who was sitting a little further away from the fire, "what did you feel when you reinforced the seal just now? Did you feel that... fusion with the sword? Like the 'man and sword as one' described in martial arts novels?"

Wang Ye leaned against a rock surface cushioned by his backpack, holding a cup of lukewarm water in both hands. The Zhenwu Sword lay horizontally beside his legs, wrapped in blue cloth, with only the hilt showing. After hearing Zhang Chulan's question, he didn't answer immediately, but instead mentally replayed the entire process in his mind.

"It was like walking down a very narrow corridor," he finally spoke. "There were bright things on both sides, and those things were moving, but I couldn't touch them. I could only walk forward along the corridor, carrying what I was carrying to the light at the end. After that, the corridor started to shrink back, and I followed it out. The only thing I could feel throughout the whole process was—the sword was definitely carrying me, not me using it."

"And after you came out, did you feel anything different?"

"A little tired," Wang Ye smiled, pressing the rim of his cup to his lips. "But it's not the kind of tiredness you get from exhaustion. It's more like carrying something very heavy for someone else the whole way, and your muscles are still sore after you put it down. It should go away in a couple of days."